


Whatever Gets You Through Today

by bashert



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: F/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:55:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23581207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bashert/pseuds/bashert
Summary: "The makeup makes me look fresh and youthful, MacKenzie. It makes me look like I'm full of vim and vigor. That you can trust me to bring you pertinent information about your health," Will argued."Their trust in you has nothing to do with how you look," Mac replied. "Now hurry up, we're on air from our living room in five."Will and Mac in the age of the coronavirus.
Relationships: Jim Harper/Maggie Jordan, Will McAvoy/MacKenzie McHale
Comments: 7
Kudos: 47





	Whatever Gets You Through Today

**Author's Note:**

> I'm doing a rewatch since, well, you know, I've got some time on my hands, and this seemed to be a good idea. I'll be honest, I threw it together and I'm just hoping for the best. My MO in life, basically. 
> 
> The title is from the song by the band The Radio.

"We should pay them more. Double! Triple, even," Will muttered as he looked into the mirror critically.

"What?" Mac asked walking into the bathroom.

"The hair and makeup people," Will turned to his wife. "They work wonders. I looked awful on air."

"You didn't look awful on air," Mac rolled her eyes. "You looked like you didn't have on as much makeup."

"The makeup makes me look fresh and youthful, MacKenzie. It makes me look like I'm full of vim and vigor. That you can trust me to bring you pertinent information about your health," Will argued. 

"Their trust in you has nothing to do with how you look," Mac replied. "Now hurry up, we're on air from our living room in five." She slapped him playfully on his ass, and left to go corral their children so they could go live.

The last thing they needed was another incident like the first time they went on air and three-year-old James William McAvoy darted for his father, despite both Mac and his six-year-old sister Charlotte's best efforts to grab him before he made it on camera. Will had taken it in stride, making some joke about the steep learning curve of working from home with small children, and the moment he was off camera Mac immediately took Jamie and Charlie and plopped them down in their parent's large bed with a couple of tablets and a bevy of unhealthy snacks to choose from.

Mac hadn't exactly felt like Mother of the Year in that moment, but desperate times and all that.

Now, in their fourth week of the stay-at-home order, Mac had backup. Their nanny hadn't been isolating with them, but fortunately _Jim and Maggie_ had been since week two. She had been on assignment, and Jim had followed her ("I spent a while following Mac around, might as well do the same for you"), and had sublet their apartment to try to save some money.

It was a good plan in theory, but of course, Jim said, "no one could have seen a global pandemic coming" ("Except for ALL of the experts who have been warning of this for DECADES," Maggie had argued back the moment they landed on Will and Mac's doorstep, bags in tow, trying to look as forlorn as possible. Will had shrugged, "solves the child care problem," and stepped aside to let them in.)

And it was Jim that was put on kid duty when Will went live, gathering his two charges and disappearing with them hanging off him shouting, "good luck, Daddy!" to Will as he sat in the makeshift studio they set up in their apartment.

For as awful as the world was at the moment, and _boy_ was it grim, Mac couldn't help the thrill that came with putting back on her executive director cap after so long without it, focusing her attention on Will and his broadcast, bringing _actual_ information to their viewers that was not sugar coated nor sensationalized. It felt good, it felt like she was doing something instead of worrying every day about her husband and her children and all of the people she loved that were scattered here and there and that she couldn't see and hug and it was killing her.

She worried about her parents (despite her mother repeatedly telling her, "oh darling, we're fine. Stiff upper lip and all that"), and she worried about Leona stuck down at her Naples home in Florida where she had been spending the long months of January and February and now looked as if she would be spending an indefinite amount of time down there ("Please, Mac, like I'd want to be in New York right now? It's 82 degrees here and I have my own private beach. I'm clearly doing just fine. Now put those babies on FaceTime for me").

She worried about Sloan in her eighth month of pregnancy ("Timing could be better," Sloan had admitted. Though Sloan's worries these days seemed focused more on the stock market than anything else. "Don worries enough for the both of us." Which was, Mac conceded, true). She had been worried about Maggie and Jim until they wound up in their guest room.

The kids loved having Maggie and Jim there, and so had Mac and Will, but the days were piling up--one after another--and with no glimmer of letting up any time soon. And Mac loved all of them, _truly_ , but she was also very ready to not be stuck in this apartment with them. 

In the meantime, she had a show to produce. From her living room. What a concept.

"You look fine," Mac told Will as he settled in his chair.

"I look like I'm 100 years old."

"You don't."

"Okay, fine. 98 then." Mac rolled her eyes once again.

"You look handsome."

"You're biased," he shot back, but she spied the smile that tugged at the corners of his lips. She shrugged.

"Maybe I am. You're on in five." Maggie walked in, ready to do a piece reporting in from the other corner of the living room.

"Do I have anything to report besides bad news?"

"A couple of places have promising vaccine candidates?" Maggie offered. 

"Look at the Co-Director of Morale coming through," Will said, this time the smile becoming real.

"When did Maggie get promoted to Co-Director of Morale?" Mac asked with a slight pout.

"When she helped me get silly putty out of Charlie's hair yesterday morning," Will answered. 

"I don't understand how those two things are correlated," Mac replied.

"You had to be there," Will said, getting himself ready. "Charlie was definitely in need of some morale."

"So was Will," Maggie stage whispered and Mac chortled.

"I heard that," Will chimed in from his spot, and then they were on air, Will reporting the news (overwhelmingly bleak, but with some small moments of hope. Mac clung to those small moments.)

It could be worse, Mac knew, it could be _so_ much worse.

But, as she watched in slow motion horror as Jim came in tearing after a half naked Jamie and Maggie dove unsuccessfully to catch him before he ended up on air, she was really quite over this pandemic.


End file.
